This has been a year of road work North of Hutchinson. Maybe it has been all over the county but it seemed worse up here. They didn’t complete one job before starting another one. We wondered more than once when we headed to town if you can get there from here.

I hate driving on the ground down streets because they are so dirty and the drop off from good pavement and then back up onto good pavement is hard on the cars alignment. I don’t know if they published the areas they were going to be working in the paper, but we don’t take the paper so can’t look to see.

Friday, September 1st. I made several trips down Monroe to town. In the morning there was nothing going on, road construction wise, on Monroe and I didn’t see anything in either direction on 56th. So I made the trip into town and back an hour later with no problem.

I went back to town mid afternoon for a short errand and when I arrived at 56th Street they had been there with the machine that grinds down the pavement. There was a 6 inch drop from Monroe down onto 56th in the intersection.

I forgot about it being ground down when I came home and didn’t realize it until I was within a short distance of the intersection and no where to turn around. I would have driven the extra 3 miles to miss all that if I’d remembered. On Saturday morning we needed to go to the library and stop for milk and we both forgot they had ground down the 56th Street and Monroe intersection.

When we arrived at the intersection at the 4 way stop on 56th there was a flag man standing in the intersection. Now why would they need a flagman at a 4 way stop. He had the traffic backed up for a block in all 4 directions instead of letting the drivers work the 4 way stop and move on through.

We couldn’t see anything going on in either direction from the stop sign so it was crazy that he was there. When we came back home we drove up Plum and across on 82nd and then back down Monroe. A few extra miles but didn’t have to deal with the ground down intersection and a flag man.

As we went around the round about on Plum I looked to the west and they were working just west of the roundabout. It had been an hour since we came through the Monroe and 56th intersection and they were just then beginning to lay down a new mat on top of the old between Plum and Monroe.

For about a week they were working on Plum street north of town. They had a flagman just a few car lengths south of the roundabout one day. The traffic was backed up all the way around the roundabout and beyond so you couldn’t get around it from any direction. Every thing was at a stand still waiting for the pilot car. Why not detour people away from Plum and the roundabout?

It has been a trial all summer to figure out how to go to town without going through road work. East 56th from Plum to 61 Highway has been covered with rocks and chunks of asphalt that has fallen off or out of the trucks hauling it to and from the work site. The pieces were large enough to break a windshield or pit up the front of the car.

About the time I knew a good route into town they started work somewhere else. I wondered if they were working all over the county or just mainly north of town between Hendricks and 61 Highway to the east. I hope they are finished out here for the winter.

There is always a major street in town or one of the major roads into Hutchinson torn up when the fair starts. Wonder why they don’t do the streets that impact the fair traffic early in the summer and do some of the others later that would not be a problem during the fair. It doesn’t put out the welcome mat for State Fair visitors when a major road into town is always torn up.

It will be a relief this year when it gets to cold for them to work on the roads and we can get in the car and drive to town without a battle strategy for the route and still finding you can’t get there from here. Living north of town this summer has been a trial to everyone’s patience and we are ready for a few months without road work. To Contact Sandy: [email protected].